Hospoda

321 E. 73rd St. (212-861-1038)

Czechs like a nice big head on their beer, and as soon as you sit down at Hospoda, in the Bohemian National Hall, you are welcomed with a small glass of beer that is almost all head. The bubbles of froth are tiny, as in a cappuccino, and the effect is like a sweet, thin cream, with a sour edge of grain buried somewhere in the flavor. It’s called mlíko, meaning milk, and normally comes only from a keg’s first or last glass; here it’s produced by a special attachment on the tap that controls how much air enters the pour. This high-tech rendering of something traditional typifies the enterprise at Hospoda. The name means “pub,” but the room eschews nostalgia for something sparer. The walls feature a long, continuous mural cut into dark wood and lit from behind. Made by a Prague graffiti artist named Masker, it whimsically references national clichés—overflowing beer mugs, Škodas—that the restaurant itself seems anxious to avoid.

The menu, which changes monthly, curbs the stodgy, dumpling-prone proclivities of Czech fare, aiming at something sleekly international, albeit with one foot still in Central Europe. In early fall, it featured Hawaiian opah, possibly the world’s most un-Czech fish. The chef, Katie Busch, is attracted to unusual, slightly extreme flavors. Goat cheese on a green salad is not baked or grilled but deliberately singed. Often somewhat conventional elements are given a surreal twist. Slow-cooked chicken breast comes with black-currant foam, pea shoots, and a millet cake doused in acacia honey. You wouldn’t want to eat chicken like this every day, but it’s an enlivening experiment: the millet cake, with the honey caramelized on the bottom, gives the impression of a collision between dinner and breakfast. Sane dishes are available, too (poached lobster, veal schnitzel, duck-leg confit), and execution is uniformly excellent. There’s a bit of an over-reliance on foams and truffle oil, however, and it’s possible to wish for just a few more Czech classics. One of the most striking dishes is a variation on obložené chlebíčky (an open-faced sandwich with poached egg and Prague ham). Here the bread is split open, stuffed with ham, gherkin, and onion, dressed with egg on the outside, and fried. The result is somewhere between scrambled eggs and French toast, and even if you haven’t had many pilsners you can see it has the makings of a world-class hangover food.

The Bohemian National Hall dates from the days when Yorkville had a big Czech diaspora, and in 2001 the Czech government took it over for use as a consulate. Hospoda, with its endearing mix of caprice and earnestness, shares this sense of cultural ambassadorship. The place is often busiest right after work, when consular employees crowd in, evidently keen to maintain their statistical lead: Czechs consume the most beer per capita of any nation on earth. (Open daily for dinner and Sundays for brunch. Main courses $25-$39.) ♦